Three of my favorite words in the firehouse are:

Jumped – You are relieved, I’ll jump a call if you get one.
Box – A reported fire.
Dinner – No explanation needed.

Stuck for a recipe for tonight? Try this site, FireHouse Chef dot com. Each recipe gives the member who submitted it and there are a large number.

Even something for my bacon loving friends:

Border Bullets – For Those Who Like it “HOT”

• 12 large jalapenos or how ever many you want to make.
• Cut the tip or small end off of the jalapenos leaving the stem on the other end.
• hollow the jalapenos. ( we use a potato peeler )
• Fill jalapenos with cream cheese.
• wrap jalapenos with bacon holding bacon in place with toothpicks.
• Broil in oven until bacon is to your liking.
• remove, let cool and eat.

Recipe by Firefighter: Phil Burrow – Alva Fire Department, Alva Oklahoma

Do you have a favorite recipe? Post it in the comments and you’ll have another place to look for recipes.
And don’t forget to stop by our friend Mrs Fuzz over on Fuzz Food for other ideas.

When I got my phone I didn’t care if it had a camera. When I bought my camera I didn’t want it to have a phone. Now that I’ve found myself in a few places wishing I had my camera only to have my phone, I will pay more attention.

While sitting fire watch on a large industrial fire from a few days earlier, our engine company was doing the obligatory orientation to entrance, egress and safety issues when I peaked into one of the warehouses and saw a sad sight. The sight captured by my sad little camera phone.

In the middle of the picture is a kitchenette with a two pot Bunn-o-Matic which completely melted down the front of the cabinets. The unit itself survived, but the bottom pot seems to now be stuck to the lower cabinet. The excessive light is from a section of collapsed roof, hence my inability to get closer for a better shot.

But I saw this and thought of Firegeezer’s nice clean 4 pot Bunn on his Facebook avatar and I shed a tiny tear for this coffee maker.

Poor thing never had a chance.

They say you always remember your first.

No matter how many came after, regardless of shape, size or ability, that first one will always have a special place in your heart.

My first was this 1976 International 10 speed double clutch 1000 gallon water tender. We shared some great experiences together and at times was my only friend out in the middle of nowhere on an abandoned car fire or running as fast as we could (mid 40s) to a freeway accident.

I learned from her that if you take care of your equipment, there is still no assurance it will work when you arrive on scene.
Aside from the water, she carried 8 pieces of assorted cribbing, 50 feet of supply line, two preconnects and a shovel. That was it.
Every time we went to the gas station on the other side of town she would backfire…loud enough to make folks duck. She had no primer motor and the light bar gave out from time to time, but it was experiences like that that taught me to expect the unexpected and adapt to ever changing situations.

Do you remember your first?

I’m not a baseball fan, but when I hear Station 13 has a bet with the Station 13 of the other team in the game, it really makes it interesting. What is the bet you ask? T-shirts. Loser sends the winner one shirt for each guy signed up. On today’s schedule:

AT
1:05 PM

AT
4:05 PM

Finding this info is challenging, I need your help gentle readers. If you know what house is first due at a local pro stadium, send me an email with a pic or a link to a pic and let’s start a database. Football, Baseball, Hockey…just list the city, stadium, company and sport. Then I’ll post it up and more folks can get into the T-shirt collecting business.

Play Ball!

I was reading a book to one of the little ones the other night and had to answer some pretty tough operational questions from a 3 year old. The book was Richard Scarry’s Busiest Firefighters Ever! and the cover is just hilarious. Aside from the engine operator wearing a cooking pot for a helmet (with Company number) and the Officer wearing a colander and playing trombone, one of the firefighters is clinging to a pompier ladder as they drive along.

My little one commented that he was not sitting safely and that the ladder looked funny. She will one day make a great Truck boss.

But it got me thinking about the wide variety of ladders both in our past and in our present.

Looking through the IFSTA manuals we see all manner of ladder raises and techniques. The 3 man 35′. The 4 man 35′. The 1 man 24′ etc etc. So what are we running with?

Most engines are wandering town with the standard 10′ attic, 12-14 foot straight and the go to 24′.

Ladder and Truck Companies, however, seem to produce odd ladders at odd times.

The pompier ladder was a center beam rung ladder with a 2-3 foot barbed arm on the end. This ladder allowed a firefighter to scale the exterior of the building without placing a ground ladder. In the days of having an escape route, it is impractical for sure. If you have one of these it needs to be adorning your wall, not your ladder tray.

In my opinion your fire escape ladder and your 6′ A frame ladder are your most important ladders for quick deployment. The fire escape ladder for obvious reasons and the 6′ A frame to get in quick and plug those pesky fire sprinklers.

San Francisco, California still operates wooden ground ladders on account of the numerous above ground electrical supplies still common in most neighborhoods. Each of their Trucks carry a 50′ wooden extension ladder weighing in at 350 lbs and requiring 6 people to raise. Then they brace that with a 24′ straight ladder. It looks VERY heavy.

At the 100th anniversary of the Great Earthquake and Fire, they brought out the last of the 65′ wooden ladders, only used for demonstration.
From the SFFD Historical Society:
“The 65 foot ladder was the principal means of rescue before the advent of the aerial ladder and was also used in locations were the aerial ladder trucks could not operate. The ladder can, when fully extended, reach a five story roof or a sixth floor window.”

The Mumbai Fire Brigade, when dealing with a stressful situation and heavy fire with hundreds trapped, tried a new way to raise a ladder with poles, pull them. Check out they guy in the bottom center of the photo. Apparently it worked and they made many a rescue.

And on a lighter note, who can tell me what is wrong with this ladder placement?

What do we see when we look at each other on the fire ground? We tend to all look alike. If you’re not careful it can be easy to get confused, misdirected and find yourself working with the wrong team.

I keep coming across this photo and will now use it to illustrate some points about fire ground recognition.

Now, before we get started, get your chuckles out about the hood and the way the SCBA hose goes under the hood into the open coat. Done? Good.
Imagine you encounter this person in a half dark hallway in a fire.

Who is this? What is their company assignment? Are they from the truck? Squad? Engine? Have the medics wandered to the roof again?

Luckily the reflective markings are clean so we saw him(her?) coming, that is point number one. Clean your Gorram gear, especially your reflective. The last thing I want to do is be sent in to find you and you look just like all the debris. Dirty gear is not the sign of an experienced firefighter, only a lazy one.

As far as company markings go, it depends on the style of gear you are wearing, most notably your helmet.

There are 3 main types of helmets making the rounds these days with minor variations. Believe me when I say that just figuring out which type of shield to buy can be confusing enough. There is a good chance you are wearing a helmet like our friend up there.
Less common today are the “LA Style” and the “Old Fashioned.” I’ll try to avoid using manufacturer names.

The LA style is perfect for the application of proper markings to avoid confusion.
This photo shows a group of teams working in the “LA Style” helmets. Firefighters and Officers have different color helmets so they can be identified from any direction. The company number is visible from 3 sides and engines have white numbers, while trucks have red numbers. Done. Simple as that.

In addition, each member has their name clearly visible in 1″ letters on the rear brim of the helmet. No more shouting “Hey you on the ladder, get down!” You can call the person by name, on the radio even, and know who you are talking to.

On the other coast the common helmet is an “Old Fashioned” style, similar to the helmet we use at HMHQ for our Tip of the Helmet series. It is simple enough, wide brim and longer tail to keep water out of your neck, but the design leaves little chance to mark it effectively. Most common the leather shield will tell you who and where the wearer is assigned, but that can help little if you are chasing them down a hallway. I believe Boston, MA marks the rear of their helmets with their company numbers. The shields can vary in color depending on rank, but most common the numbers will tell you about the company.

In the FDNY for example A black passport shield with white number is an engine company. Yellow passport or yellow number is a squad and a red passport belongs to the truck.

Most often, however, the members mark their helmets on the under side of the rear, so you can only see their name when they place chin to chest. And even then, it is upside down. But, they have their names on their coats.

What I’m getting at here is that we need to be not only visible, but recognizable on the fire ground. In Happy’s perfect world helmets are color coded by rank, marked with your name on the back, company numbers on three sides and your level of medical training indicated by the color of reflective tape on the helmet. Yellow EMT, Orange EMT-I, Blue Paramedic, White MD. Your turnout coat will also have your name on the back, below the airpack. The airpack itself will have a large reflective number showing where it came from.
All this is simple enough to do from the onset, but a lot of guys here where I work have gone through a lot of trouble to make sure that helmet is as black as night and laugh when they see me cleaning mine after a fire.

If I can see you I can rescue you. Simple as that. Now go wash and mark your gear.

We dove into why we wear a bugle to signify rank a few weeks back, but some of our readers are wondering “How many bugles signify a Chief?” We get at least 5 hits a day from google with just that question, so here goes:

It depends.

Allow me to explain.

The Chief Officer of a Fire Company or Department is most often signified by five overlapping bugles pointing in all directions, signifying that that person is in charge of all aspects of the Company. From this rank down we remove bugles, but they always remain crossed, signifying that the person is a Chief Officer.

A Deputy Chief or Administrative Chief such as the EMS Section Chief or Deputy Chief of Operations will likely have 4 crossed Bugles, all pointing down. This signifies that the wearer is below only the Chief Officer and can serve in that capacity should it be necessary.

The highest rank in the field, responding to calls, should be your Division Chief. Division Chiefs cover a geographic area and supervise Battalion Chiefs. This rank is signified by 3 crossed bugles, again all pointing down. You can see that as you get more bugles you are in charge of more people.

A front line supervisor of multiple Companies is the Battalion Commander, or Battalion Chief. This person supervises multiple companies in multiple specializations. A Battalion Chief covers a geographic area and often serves as the Incident Commander at most incidents.

(All these insignia available at Chiefs Supply)

In most jurisdictions gold bugles signify a Chief Officer, but pay close attention to how many are present to see who you are addressing. When on duty, the Chief Officer should be addressed by rank, given full attention including you standing and facing them, a smart salute (when appropriate) and an offer of a hand shake introducing yourself. You should then stay in their presence until excused or given an order. It sounds overly formal, but when respect is given your workplace becomes a more respectful and professional place. And saluting the Chief in shorts and tennis shoes is just silly.

In addition to collar insignia, Chief Officers should be wearing a white helmet with a gold shield. This differentiates them from line personnel with a simple glance.

A white turnout coat should be reserved only for the Chief of Department. In a major emergency or MCI this Chief can be easily spotted in the sea of white helmets at the command post.

Next week we’ll talk about the rest of the Department and how we should be dressed, marked and labeled.

Until then, *snaps to attention* “Thank you, Chief”

There is a lot of buzz on the interwebs about a new TV show on NBC this fall. I have remained neutral as to what I think about the show, since I have not seen it, but judging from the previews, I don’t think we’ll see anything too new when it comes to the way our profession is viewed by the TV audience and those in the business.

Then I thought more about the impact TV medicine has had on my ability to treat patients in the field. I tried to get mad about folks calling for the new medicine they saw in commercials or that they have a condition seen on last night’s episode of House or ER.

But I realized that the way EMS and EMS patients are portrayed actually plays into our favor. Follow me on this. There are a few conditions I classify with the prefix “TV” as in “TV-Seizures.”

TV-Seizures have a person, often in their 20s to 30s, flopping around on the floor, holding their eyes shut tight while the friends panic and run around looking for something to put into their mouth. I often lean down into the patient’s ear, introduce myself as a Paramedic and explain that I know what a seizure looks like and that they can stop faking it now.

TV-Overdose has a number of subsets but my favorite is the ice in the crotch for the heroin OD. Whether this is an old herbal remedy minus the herbs or what, it certainly is a perfect way to let me know he was using heroin. You can deny it all you want but when you try to explain the ice in the crotch and pits is where a drink spilled, now you look silly.

TV-Medics are always on their way to another career. “I’m going to medical school,” is my favorite, but they rarely portray EMTs and Medics who want to be just that. The one exception I found was the short lived show “Saved” that featured a laid back medic who’s family kept trying to get him into medical school, but he declined. His partner was, alas, studying to go back to school. I like the trendy T-shirt with “bus driver jacket” uniform he wore. So relaxed. I will one day put a Ferrari patch on my jacket ala Mother. I’ll post a pic.

But in the end, they always have someone kicking in the door to the trauma room and shouting vitals to attentive ER staff. HA!….sorry….that always gives me a good belly laugh. More than once I’ve had to block the nurses station to get a spot. That’s not good TV.

TV has a lot to offer our struggling profession, little of it can be good because when you get down to it, our job is boring. There are no smoke creatures on a tropical island, no bikini clad co-eds romping in strange stunts (not all the time anyway) and no cash prize at the end. The reason TV shows about EMS never do well is because they follow the characters home. Remember when Rescue Me was a cool firefighter show? Then they followed Tommy home, the family got weird and now it’s a circus soap opera set in a firehouse.

Come on TV Producers, give us a show about EMS that show the public the truth! Show them the countless hours of training and recertification, standby, paper work, stocking and dealing with 911 abusers, finding a clean bathroom on post, not just the “You’re not dying on my watch!” cliche. I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work at all.
and…
ACTION!

We tell kids not to do it all the time, but there is a time when playing with matches is OK. Since you’ve visited our Purchasing Division partners, Tanga, you know HMHQ is fond of brain teasers, riddles and word puzzles.
No surprise then that the lost art of bar challenges rates high in our training here. We’ll get into details of how to get a drink for a dollar and pick up a cherry without touching it in another post, but for today, we’re playing with matches.

In most bars you can ask for a match book and, if properly prepared, entertain a group of friends for at least 2 rounds. For example: Can you make the fish in the picture here swim the other way moving only 3 matches?

Have fun with this link to Match Puzzles. I wanted to bring them over, but the folks did such a nice job, why ruin it? Each puzzle has a link to the solution so you can’t accidentally cheat.

I’ve been seeing some nifty gadgets on some turnout coats lately. They’ve made it onto the helmets as well, so I wanted to share some of the neater things folks are buying to make their job easier and safer.

First, let’s shed some light on things.

It used to be we just carried a flashlight in our pocket, then folks started lashing them to the helmets, but they always seemed to get caught on something bolted to the side.
One of the brothers came in with this item on his helmet the other day:

This particular kind of light I like for 2 reasons. #1, it is low profile and can sit right along the front of my shield. #2 it is LED so it is bright and saves having to recharge it every shift.
This particular model is available from Foxfury Headlamps and will run you about $150 delivered. Not bad considering the size and specs. Maybe Santa will bring ol’ Happy a new lamp.

I think we all now have a 90 degree coat lamp, like Ed here, by Pelican, this one from Police and Fire Supply dot com. I like Ed, he holds up well, but if you set your coat down wrong, you hear that “bang” and know the bulb is out. He can also be annoying when you’re crawling along a smoke filled hallway and points at your face instead of the floor. I rigged up a little strap to solve this problem, which someone quickly “borrowed.” The new strap has MEDIC written all over it and has yet to wander off.

The helmet camera is starting to get popular, have a look at firevideo if you don’t believe me. At first I thought it was just another show off type gadget. A co-worker attached one to the bottom of his remote controlled plane and flew it around. If you ever need to get dizzy fast, watch something like that.
But recently I saw this video from the New Chapel Fire Department.

Find more videos like this on firevideo.net
What a great training video. And we don’t have to worry about staffing a video unit to respond to fires either. We can hit record on the camera, film the evolution and have a first hand account on conditions inside. I think in the near future these will be linked to the command buggy to give the Chief in the street a better understanding of the fire conditions. Maybe he would have seen fire above this crew in two separate places and recognized an attic fire.
I don’t have one and likely won’t for awhile. I’d end up recording another burnt popcorn building alarm on the 18th floor and use up all the memory in the stairwell.

Personal escape tools are all the rage these days, from simply rope bags on belts to elaborate descent systems, there is indeed a variety on the market. My favorite it something that has versatility, that can expand as I need it. I like this product. I wish the video showed a few different things though, watch it first.

First, I’d like to see someone changing from belt to harness with gloves on and kneeling. Second, get that axe out of the passenger compartment. Take the time at the scene to put it in your belt while sizing up the fire. Heck, even get the SCBAs out of the cab. That 46 seconds of size up could make a big difference. And thirdly, I enjoyed the versatility of the strap that allows you to climb that nifty ladder to cut the hole, then you can climb off? Never leave your ladder when cutting the hole. Can’t reach? Train more.
But all that aside, what a fantastic product from Fire Innovations. I’d like one.

The last item today isn’t really a gadget, but a nice piece of tradition I think everyone should have. A leather shield from Paul Conway or the Fire Store. You can get them from a number of other places around the interwebs, but I like the Conway and Fire Store quality and sometimes the holes come pre-drilled, which is nice when trying to wrangle my own onto an old Cairns 5A with angled bolts. The quality is superb and there is a wide variety of customizable features. I like the gold leafed ones too, but we have a retired guy here who does them custom and by hand.

What will they think of next? Who knows. I know there are a lot of other gadgets out there, these are just some I’ve seen/have, that I like.

Do you have a gadget you like? Post a link in comments.

Newsweek magazine has a section called “My Turn” where they turn over a page in the magazine to a reader to comment on what they are passionate about. They are usually great tales of recovering from cancer, dealing with the aged or something else interesting.

Apparently my submission was either not interesting or not well written, they passed.

I wrote this 4 years ago and never had a place to put it. I found it and wanted to share.

Submitted to newsweek Magazine, August 2005

Have you ever gone into work in the morning and it was closed for the day to save the company money? My employer is doing just such a thing. Now understand that I don’t get the day off, I have to gather all my things and go to another site to do my work. Everyday someone I work with is in this situation and not only is it inconvenient for me, it could cost you your life. You see, I’m a Firefighter / Paramedic.

Politicians and administrators across America are turning to a dangerous game that saves money on paper but can have disastrous results in real life. Instead of cutting costs by closing a fire station and moving the fire engines, ladder trucks and paramedic units to a nearby location, they close a different station everyday leaving the entire area without fire or paramedic services. Some cities “brownout” more than 10% of fire stations a day. You can see how the savings can add up quickly, that is until someone calls 911. Even with all the talk of Homeland Security, WMD response and terrorism threats, the very people who would come to our aid are gone.
The fire station nearest to my home is closed about 2 days a week. Is yours? How do you find out? I thought the best way would be to call the fire chief. Her office gave me a boiler plate answer about how the fancy computers they have will automatically dispatch the nearest unit in case of an emergency.

I asked, “Isn’t that why they built the fire station here in the first place? So that in case of an emergency they will be there?“ and was told, “…it will reopen tomorrow.“ Not satisfied, I called my elected district supervisor’s office who’s intern was unaware of the practice. His office had not heard the Chief had “closed” any stations at all, but that they would look into it. The intern called back 20 minutes later with the number to the fire chief’s office. Big help.

An official with the local firefighter’s union made an excellent example of this brownout policy that relates to every citizen. With a serial killer on the loose, leave one of your windows open every night. Not the same one all the time, but a different one, hoping the killer won’t notice.
This practice sounds unrealistic, I know, but your local fire department may have already made the decision for you by closing the closest fire station for the day.

Even if you do get out of the fire safely due to properly working smoke detectors and a well practiced escape plan, the nearest fire engine is 8 minutes away instead of 4. Keep in mind that a fire doubles in size every minute.
That extra 4 minutes could mean the difference between life and death should you experience a heart attack, stroke, get in a car accident, break your leg or any number of other conditions that warrant an emergency response.

The worst part of this practice is that it is being done quietly, so quietly in fact that many of my neighbors didn’t know it was happening until I told them. No politician will stand in front of TV cameras and volunteer the fire station near their home to be closed.

So go to your local fire station and find out if you really are as safe as you thought. Just don’t be surprised if there’s no one there to answer the door.

I wrote a bit about the history of the bugle in the fire service and intended to post it here today when the tradition led me back to why I am where I am today.

When my father made Captain, I recall being surprised and honored when he asked his teenage son to pin his badge on at the ceremony.
Captain.
Two bugles.

Over the years that followed we had our differences, but those bugles always followed me. They were on the collar of the officer who led my volunteer fire academy. Two bugles adorned the badge of the woman who failed me out of the exam in Seattle. The bugles greeted me on my first day in my current Department.

Seems like a simple symbol, but looking back that had to be one of the most shaping moments in my learning years. A little piece of metal with twin shapes.

Why we do what we do can be a difficult question to answer. There are those who might show you a paycheck or a retirement calculation. Then there are others who look at you blankly as if there were no other profession in the world.

I particularly enjoyed Nicholas Cage’s character in Bringing out the Dead when he answered, “Father was a bus driver, mother was a nurse, I was kind of born into it.”

I am a fireman because of my father. I know, on Father’s Day of all days to chime in about it.
Dad made sure I went to my Explorer meetings instead of being an idiot.
Dad sent me a pair of good structural gloves when my volunteer department’s gloves didn’t feel right.
He has always been there, even if it was shouting at one another that first summer back from college. Shouting which inspired me to pass the volunteer test and get on with the local dept.
Dad gave me support when I made Lieutenant at my first paid spot. Then even more support when I got demoted.
Dad did his best to keep me on task with school, despite my efforts to the contrary.
Dad made my Paramedic graduation and got me my own clipboard, which I used.
He led by example, still does.

Mal Reynolds would say the Angry Captain ain’t got much need for words. His actions speak for him.

He likely disapproves of this kind of talk in a public arena, but I want my readers to know why I do what I do.

Because of Dad.
Sappy for sure, but 100% true. His example of unconditional support taught me that I can do anything I want, and I did.

The more I think about it, it was standing in front of Station 22 as the Truck pulled out on a job that got me into this profession. You can’t show a 10 year old boy a 100′ Crown Tiller rolling code to a job and not expect him to go into the business. Forget what I said up there, go with the truck explanation.

Thanks, Dad.
Thank you, Captain.
Appreciate it, Pop.

“the Google” it is called in my house. The search engine of choice for most.
As a part of tracking what you visitors are reading, google analytics lets me see any search engine queries that lead to someone clicking on the blog. At first I thought it was silly and useless, then I started to see posts over at AD’s place about strange search queries that hit his popular site.

So I decided to look deeper into it and that is how I discovered Happy Medic is the number one google result for “cocaine and strippers” and all combinations of c-spine precautions.

But how did these folks find me?

• “that’ll do pig” – OK I do have a post that has that phrase
• “confident paramedic” – I’ll take that
• “carter country mp3″ – You got me
• “Happy memory bomber” – That’s me alright
• “Her limp legs” – I admit this is in a post
• “alcohol” – There is a lot of that here
• “i threw up from food poisoning and nearly passed why did someone called the paramedics” – If I could figure that out, friend, I could retire happy
• “how do you escape a building with heavy smoke” – Get low and go
• “koiler theory” – A t-shirt mentioned on a linked site
• “scout with a medic head” – Huh?
• “why does fdny wear radio strap right side” – I don’t really care why, but do they? Now I care
• “who is emt in charge of paramedic at car crash scene in vermont” – I would certainly know that, right?

Was one of these you?

Not wasting enough time online?

Well now you can waste more! With the Happy Medic list of addictive distracting sites. Here’s a shot of my shortcuts bar in the firefox browser:
The Super T Icon – First stop, try out Tanga a daily purchase site with a twist. Not only can you get a great deal on a board game, Tshirt or other neat stuff, but see lower on their page, that area for the puzzles? Those are user submitted and are updated every evening at 10 PM Eastern. Try one out and, if you like it, click on the links to submit your own. (Warning, highly addictive.)

The Blue square and white f are for facebook, or f’book or crackbook. (also highly addictive.) I’m there by the way, just look for my mug under, you guessed it, the Happy Medic. Become a fan!

The next 4 exclamation marks are for woot! wine.woot! shirt.woot! and sellout.woot! The best of the deal a day sites, woot has great products and hilarious product descriptions, not to mention $5 shipping on every order, except the $10 shirts, which ship free. There’s also a weekly shirt design contest at shirt.woot and if you purchase the wine.woot in the first few hours you could get your order overnighted for free to act as a “lab rat” for others. You taste teh free wine and post comments. How cool is that?

The google.

Next up is digg, the little guy with the shovel. More specifically, digg labs, this engine tracks what is hot online in real time and shows you all the top stories and how popular they are. then you set it as your screen saver and watch all the gold just drip from the screen.

ebay, self explanatory.

Pogo.com is a free games site that often does a free preview week where you can play all manner of games. The wife LOVES this one.

Mapquest
and
costco are good to have at the ready

as are
Craigslist, the peace symbol
and
the little red and blue dot are for Flickr, the photo sharing site.

The Tf in between is for Thingfling, another deal a day sight, with slightly lower quality than woot, but still fun stuff.
That annoying page symbol is because T-mobile won’t make a cool icon, so no link for you.
Photobucket is a great image hosting site while vector magic used to be free. Boo-hoo.

Youtube and wikipedia are good for time wasting, so is netflix. Have to make sure the wife doesn’t push my movies down the queue.

Gotta have my MSNBC fix (stop grumbling) and the next 3 help me solve the Tanga puzzles,(cheat really, don’t tell anyone).

The k is for a neat game called k-dice.
Mr Smiley faced man leads to a tower defense game at Funnylishus that haunts my nightmares. You try it, tell me it’s not addictive.
The blue house lets me keep tabs on the rental property and the next annoying boring icon is to 1800diapers.com. Yeah, I have that bookmarked. You want to make something of it?

The knot work logo leads to a really neat celtic knotwork program Square Knots that lets you make a neat knot, then capture it for use elsewhere.

The next f’book logo is for Happy’s page, that first one was for my page.

The familiar orange b, for blogger, leads to the family blog, notice no link.

The graph looking icon is to google analytics which may be, quite possibly, the third coolest thing on the interwebs behind pron and Happy. It lets you track everything about your site’s visitors. Their location, screen resolution, I can tell what you guys are reading and what you’re not. Not you specifically, but I get an overview of how many folks went where. Really cool.

There’s me, Happy, looking quite nice 16px x 16px. That took me over a week to draw you know.
On the other side is the link to my massive bankroll at google’s adsense from all the ads you guys click. In a year of doing this, I have yet to get anything to invest back into this place.

The circled Z is to the zazzle store where you can get your Happy Medic T-shirts, hats, bibs, children’s wear, etc. It started as an idea to raise money to go out on my own, away from blogger, but after selling 50% of my sales to date to my mother, maybe I should try something else.

Another photobucket is followed by everyone’s favorite 140 character mini-blog site Twitter. Click the link at the top of this page to follow me.

Ah gmail, you know you can reach me there, thehapymedic at gmail dot com.
EMS united, JEMS Connect and Firefighter Nation round up the professional stuff, all great visits.

The ones you won’t see up there are over in the mutual aid bar, most notably Mark Glencourse and Firegeezer.

Now go waste some time!